


and here's the frozen proof

by the_crownless_queen



Series: superheroes HP AU [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, M/M, or rather supervillain, these kids are a mess, though it wasn't on purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 15:05:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_crownless_queen/pseuds/the_crownless_queen
Summary: Look, Fabian never actually meant to become a supervillain, it just sort of happened.





	and here's the frozen proof

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely written for this prompt: Person A is a superhero and is in love with their superhero partner/sidekick/nemesis, Person B.

The thing was, becoming a villain had never been part of the plan.

Not that there had been a plan, per se. Fabian liked to plan for everything, sure, but not even he could have predicted what would happen, how quickly things would spiral out of control.

Thinking back on it, he could retrace his steps to the moment everything started to go wrong.

Fabian had been only just eighteen then, freshly out of high school. He'd managed to keep his powers hidden until then — not out of shame, but because having a power and not wanting to use it in a  _legitimate_  job wasn't looked on kindly, and Fabian didn't really want to do anything with his ice powers.

Keeping his family and himself cool during the summers was more than enough for him. He wanted to become a teacher, but if his powers came out he'd have the choice between fireman and ice cream maker.

Yes, okay, he was exaggerating a little — but not that much, unfortunately.

But as he'd been walking home he had heard a scream — a girl, as young as Fabian's own sister, was struggling against the grip of a monster of a man, and Fabian had seen red.

The man had frozen instantly, and this time, when the girl had struggled, she had managed to break her assailant's grip.

But the statue had also fallen and shattered, and the man had died a horrible death.

Fabian had run back home without looking back — and he still hates that he didn't think to check up on the girl — and he had spent the night throwing up and ignoring his concerned family.

The next morning, the papers were ablaze with the apparition of a new villain who had frozen a man solid and then killed him, leaving behind a fifteen-year-old girl with severe frostbite on both her arms.

Fabian hadn't been able to eat a single bite that morning, and half an hour later, once their parents had left for their respective works and Molly had gone to see her friends, Gideon had cornered him in his room.

"Tell me you didn't," he said, eyes pleading.

Still tasting bile in his throat, Fabian had stayed silent.

Gideon had understood him anyway — Fabian could never hide anything from his twin — and he'd sat down on the bed, heaving a long, terrible sigh. "God, this is so messed up," he'd said, running a hand through his messy red hair.

"Tell me about it," Fabian had replied, chuckling humorlessly.

It had taken him five seconds to confess to everything — the girl crying out and his powers lashing out ( _himself_  lashing out, because his powers haven't acted without conscious thought since he turned eleven), freezing a man solid.

How he can still hear the sound that man made as he shattered, how he can still see his face, stuck in horrified agony.

There had been no blood when Fabian had left the scene, but the pictures on the newspapers that morning had been from later. The broken pieces had thawed then.

There had been so much blood…

"Hey," Gideon had whispered, "you'll be okay. We'll just…" He swallowed, hard. "We'll just have to be more careful. You didn't know what you were doing."

"You mean  _I_  will," Fabian had retorted wryly. He had sighed. "And we all know what we're doing. Whether we realize it or not."

Gideon had glared back. " _We_  will. I'm with you, brother. Always. You know that — we'll figure this out, and we'll make sure this doesn't happen again."

Fabian had closed his eyes. They had prickled hotly with tears he refused to shed. "What if…" He licked his lips, words sticking in his mouth like too sweet tea. "What if I wanted it to happen again?"

Because it had been horrible, yes, and it made him sick to his stomach… but he had saved that girl. She had been hurting, and he had helped her.

Wasn't that worth  _something_?

"Is that truly what you want?"

It shouldn't have been such a relief to hear his brother's voice so devoid of judgment, but it was.

"Yes," he had said, staring into brown eyes identical to his own. "It is. Can you help me?"

This was a terrible thing he was asking of his brother, and yet he couldn't  _not_  do it. Having Gideon by his side, supporting him… It would make all the difference. It would mean he wasn't lost.

Gideon took forever to reply, and Fabian's heart pounded in his chest. Finally, he said, "Of course."

It felt like Fabian could breathe again.

* * *

They started with plants and insects. Things he could kill without regrets — things he could test his abilities on.

He remembered doing this once before, back when he had first found out about his powers. Back then, though, he had been playing — freezing the pond in winter so they could skate on it, making his snowballs better than everyone else's, ensuring his drinks were always chilled in the summer months…

Parlor tricks, compared to what he was doing now.

He hadn't killed anyone else, but he had caused a few more frostbite cases, some more severe than others.

The public called him the Iceman, and they were scared of him.

But more importantly, crime was going down.

"The Iceman's a terrible name," Gideon noted, throwing the newspaper at Fabian's face. He glared. "I thought we had agreed you wouldn't go out again until you had this," he wiggled his fingers in a crude approximation of Fabian's ability, "under control."

Fabian scowled. "It went fine. No one saw me. And you know I had to do this — I have to practice on humans too, and I don't see you volunteering." Not that Fabian wanted him to. The mere thought of it was enough to make him sick.

"They're calling you a villain," Gideon continued, ignoring Fabian's last remark but for a quick roll of his eyes. His lips were pursed thin.

"I am," Fabian said, nodding curtly. "By their standards, I am — I was a villain from the moment that guy died."

"That's not fair."

"Well, life's not fair." Fabian shrugged, ignoring the twinge of pain in his heart at his words. "If it were, I wouldn't need to do this."

He stared at his brother until Gideon looked away. "Well," he said, tone a little too bright to be real, "I don't think you're a villain."

Fabian's lips quirked up in a tired smile, and he pulled the paper to himself. "Thanks, Gideon."

This time, Gideon looked him in the eyes, unflinching. "You're welcome."

* * *

Once he was identified as a villain, it didn't take long for the heroes to start coming after him.

His least favorite was Justice — and with her, Lightning, who was annoyingly fast (luckily, he was  _not_  immune to slippery roads, and at the speeds he liked to go at, a fall had to hurt). The woman had this way of getting in the middle of his business, and she was ridiculously moral.

In short, she grated on his nerves.

"Your way's not working," Fabian would shout at her, frost rising from his closed fists. He could always taste the Arctic in the air when he had to speak to Justice, because the woman never listened. "You take them down, they get back up — a week later, they're back in the streets, doing it all over again. I take them down, they never come back."

"We don't kill people," she'd answer. "That is not the way. Think of what we could do together," she would plead.

But Fabian had seen the state some of her victims were in — in their place, he'd prefer death.

"Some people don't deserve to live," he'd reply coldly.

"You don't believe that," Justice would say.

There was never any place for doubt in her tone, and it always made Fabian's blood boil. 'I do."

Rinse and repeat.

All this because she had seen him save a girl once, and since then she believed he could be better.

That he should be better.

But he wasn't, and he didn't want to be. His way was working.

So what if he had more nightmares than sleep these days? What if he dreaded the day he saw fear in his mother's or little sister's eyes — or worse, his brother's, the only person who truly knew him?

None of that mattered if it meant there'd be one less girl calling out for help.

But Justice didn't see it that way. She refused to. In his more charitable moments, Fabian believed she couldn't.

That left him with a problem, though. he had to get rid of her — and unlike his usual means of doing so, he couldn't just freeze her. Even if not everyone considered her as such, Justice was a hero.

A true one, not a villain like Fabian. She did good in the world — she'd do more if she stopped stalking Fabian, obviously — and so she didn't deserve to die.

If he killed everyone who annoyed him, the world would be a very lonely place, after all.

He did need a way to get rid of her, though — which was what led him to Edgar.

* * *

Edgar Bones, ex-war reporter now working for the Daily Prophet's hero column, was the brother of a blind lawyer who was dating the cop said to have worked with Justice on taking down Voldemort's drug operation last year.

The irony was almost too much.

Kidnapping him was too easy.

Fabian froze his lips shut — this, he had learned to do a long time ago to silence annoying siblings, and he knew how to reverse it harmlessly — and dragged him to the abandoned hotel he had more or less declared his base of operations.

("It's an evil lair," Gideon had told him when Fabian had shown him the place. He had been thoroughly unimpressed by the dusty, half-dilapidated staircase, or by the old crystal chandelier hanging above them. "You have an evil lair."

"It's not an evil lair," Fabian had protested, but his brother had refused to listen. "It's our base of operations. Like Batman and the Batcave," he tried, a little desperate.

Needless to say, that hadn't worked. Since then, Gideon had referred to Fabian's squatted hotel as his evil lair, and now even Fabian had gotten used to it.)

Fabian tied Bones to a chair and took off his makeshift gag and blindfold carefully. "I'm really sorry about this, but I need your sister to leave me alone," Fabian said. "I promise I won't hurt you. I just want to talk to her."

Edgar barely flinched, though his body tensed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he lied, and Fabian had to admire his courage.

"Sure you don't," Fabian scoffed, moving closer to the windows. Justice should already know he'd taken her brother, and he had left her enough clues that she'd know where to find him.

Sacrificing this place would be inconvenient, but if it got Justice off his case, it'd be well worth it.

He turned his back on Edgar for only a moment — but a moment was all it took.

There was a sharp pain in the back of his head, spreading through his neck and down his spine, and everything went black.

When Fabian came back to his sense, night had fallen and his hostage was gone, the ropes binding him cut off.

Despite his discomfort, his lips curled into a smirk. Oh, this could be fun.

* * *

The next time, he brought handcuffs and he pettily didn't unfreeze Edgar's lips.

The man glared at him, brown eyes icy, until Fabian blinked and suddenly, Edgar was gone. There was blood at the back of his head and a ringing noise in his ears, and yet he had no recollection of what had happened.

He tried again, and again, and again, and…

Well, he stopped counting after a while. It didn't matter what he did — Edgar always escaped the moment Edgar turned his eyes away.

Finally, he decided not to bother with the gag — he did, however, regretfully knock Edgar out to bring him there.

And then he had to call Gideon to help him carry the unconscious body to the lair, because Edgar was heavier than he looked.

"You know," Gideon grumbled as they carried the body inside, "there  _are_  easier ways to ask a bloke out on a date."

Fabian blushed violently. "I'm not — that's not —  _Gideon_!"

Gideon burst into laughter, and for a moment it was just like they were sixteen again, playing a prank on their sister's unsuspecting boyfriend.

And then Edgar started to stir, and Fabian cursed. "Go, go," he told his brother. "I can handle it from here."

Gideon snorted, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "I'm sure," he drawled, but he obligingly vanished.

"You know, you don't actually need to blindfold me or anything when you bring me here," were Edgar's first words when he truly came back to himself. "I know how to find this place — I did escape it." His lips twisted into a smug smirk that shouldn't have looked as attractive as it did. "Several times."

That startled him. "And you didn't tell anyone? Why?"

Edgar shrugged. His hands were untied still, Fabian noticed, and yet he felt no urge to bind them. "Didn't seem all that important," he said, still smirking. He stared right into Fabian's eyes, and Fabian shivered.

"I don't get you," he admitted, nonplussed. "Don't you want your sister to rescue you?"

"I don't need her to rescue me," Edgar said, rolling his eyes. "I can rescue myself just fine. Besides, you told me you weren't going to hurt me."

"I could have been lying," Fabian spluttered.

Edgar tapped the tip of his nose knowingly. "You weren't — I would have known."

"Oh," Fabian said, eyes growing wide. " _Oh_."

Why had it never occurred to him that if Justice was powered her brother might be too?

He looked away, staring at the entrance door. He had left it open, he realized.

It didn't matter, he told himself firmly. He could always close it later. He turned back around and almost jumped out of his skin.

"You're still here," he said, surprised.

And indeed, Edgar hadn't moved. He was still sitting in the chair Fabian had practically shoved him into. For once, he hadn't run away when Edgar turned his back on him.

"I'm still here," Edgar confirmed, a playful smile on his lips.

Fabian frowned, heart twisting as it tried not to hope. "Why?"

Edgar's smile grew. "I wanted to try something different."

It was a trap. He knew it. He could see it — Edgar's smile was too honeyed for it not to be a trap.

And yet, Fabian found that he didn't care.

"I'm not going to stop what I'm doing," he cautioned. "You can't convince me otherwise."

Once again, Edgar shrugged. "I'm not my sister," he said. "I won't pretend I like it, or condone it, but… I do understand your point of view."

"Your sister doesn't," Fabian pointed out, heart beating faster.

Edgar nodded. "And she won't either. She's not built for it."

"And you're different?"

"Sometimes." He smirked.

Fabian hesitated for a long second but… Well, he didn't really have anything to lose. "Alright," he said.

It almost hurt to take off his mask. Still wearing the Iceman's dark clothing, he felt naked without it. Bare, exposed for the world to see.

But here, the world was only Edgar, who stared back hungrily.

"I'm Fabian," he said, extending a hand. On his tongue, the words tasted like hope and renewal.

"Edgar," Edgar said, taking Fabian's hand and shaking it. "But you knew that already."

It hit him then, and his heart raced in his chest. He tightened his hold on Edgar's hand, but released it when the other man barely winced, even though he must have felt the cold.

"So did you," he breathed out. "How?"

Edgar inclined his head humbly. "I'm very good at my job — don't worry," he quickly added when Fabian's face fell. "I wouldn't dare reveal anything you didn't want me to, unless I absolutely had to."

Fabian believed him. He had no real reason to, but he did.

He sighed and rubbed his chest, where his heart clenched very tenderly. He cast one last long look at their surroundings — now, more than ever, that hotel looked abandoned. Desolate.

Fabian fought back a shiver. "What do you say we get out of here?"

Edgar grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."


End file.
